Henry Waldock
2015.09.18
Some people provide police with information in exchange for anonymity. That's a bargain you must keep.
You can use this information to get search warrants to discover evidence of crime. This page demonstrates drafting techniques you can use to keep your end of the bargain as the case goes through the court system.
The judge or justice who receives your application decides whether, on the basis of the evidence you provide, the warrant should issue. You must give this justice "full, fair and frank" disclosure of what you know about the case. If you know of reasons the justice should not trust information you received, you must disclose it.
For example, people who give you inside information about criminals usually live criminal lifestyles themselves. The issuing justice needs to know what you know about their credibility.
To protect your confidential informants, you may apply for an order under s.487.3 sealing up your application, so that nobody can discover what you wrote in your application.
If charges result from your investigation, then there may be a trial.
At trial, defence may challenge the decision of the issuing justice to grant your application. The trial judge hears that application in open court. The prosecutor must disclose to the defence and to the trial judge as much of the application as possible - in order to show that the issuing justice could reasonably have issued the warrant. But the prosecutor must not reveal any information which tends to identify the confidential informant.
The prosecutor and the police officer may apply for an order permitting the court to disclose a copy of the original application to the prosecutor for the purpose of redacting (removing) information which tends to identify the source. They identify the risky material, and black it out with a felt pen. Copies of these marked documents go to the defence lawyer and the judge.
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35. Yesterday, Johnny Rotten told me that on , he ate dinner at Henry Waldock's house. While he was there, he saw Mr Waldock receive 20 or 30 packages of cocaine. Mr Waldock told him that this delivery was “the best powder he ever got from the Colombians”.
36. I have received 24 tips from this person in the past 3 years. Of these tips, 7 were proved reliable by subsequent arrests of the suspects involved, and seizure of contraband identified in those tips. 8 other tips he gave were the subject of tips from independent sources, such as other tipsters, and the tipsters matched. I can not say whether the other tips were accurate or not.
37. This person has the following criminal record:
(a) 1999-12-21
Perjury 6 months
(b) 2001-01-13
PPT 12 months
(c) 2005-05-15
Obstruct P.O. Suspended Sentence 1 year
What the judge and defence lawyer receive barely makes any sense. Even worse, an astute reader will notice that this method allows the suspect to deduce several things. The length of the pronoun "he" differs from the length of the pronoun "she". By looking carefully at the word spacing, the defendant might figure out that the source is male. Paragraph 37 reveals that the source has exactly three convictions.
You can draft your applications better to protect the source without confusing the trial judge later in the process.
You can draft your confidential source's information in terms which omit the specifics. Mention the specifics in sub-paragraphs, which you can redact later.
Because you put all the dangerous material into Appendix A, you can remove it, and give the judge and the defendant a document which tells what can be told without identifying the source.